ON THE LONG ROAD TO OPEN SPECTRUM

LET IT FREE

Tom Evslin has a good post on the potential good things that can from an open spectrum policy, a subject near to my heart (see post from a year ago).  Tom reminds us that:

Today the radio frequency is similarly Balkanized. Parts are licensed to each cellular operator, parts to AM radio stations, other parts to FM radio stations, still other parts to TV “channels”. The chart below shows how the US has divided radio spectrum (click on it if you want to see the detail).

It's a fascinating chart, showing how spectrum is supremely sliced and diced.  Tom highlights how amazing things can come from even tiny steps the FCC has taken into the world of unlicensed spectrum:

As an experiment, the FCC in the US and similar bodies in other countries have left small swatches of spectrum open for use without an explicit license. The availability of this open spectrum has led to important advances like WiFi (you don’t need a radio station license or permission from anyone to operate a WiFi network), Bluetooth, and the services offered by many WISPs (wireless ISPs) for broadband access to the Internet where wired broadband access is not available.

This explosion of innovation in the tiny amount of spectrum which is open parallels the innovation spawned by the existence of an open Internet.

Just imagine if this  "Case Study"  and/or experiment could free up more of the  spectrum "eye-chart" above.

It'll be interesting to see how long this really takes, especially after the recent AWS $14 billion auction by the FCC.  Tough for any government agency to walk away from that kind of dough.

Comments

[Yaser Anwar]

Michael, I agree with you.

The FCC has a strong incentive to keep selling off spectrum. Who wouldn't want all that extra cash for doing no work? The companies buying it have a strong incentive to keep the plan going too. Having all that spectrum costs a lot of money, they're not going to give it up anytime soon, especially when it gives them a competitive advantage too. For similar reasons, they have no interest into doing research into using spectrum more efficiently.

Wifi is somewhat interesting because anyone can set up a network as the frequency band is unlicensed & members of a Wifi network can both send and receive. There's an excellent explanation by Tim Shepard given to The FCC in 02. http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6513201206

IMO the tools for cooperative radio net need to be defined. Just as IP brought various networks together into the Internet, we need the same tools that will bring the various spectrum bands into a radio Internet.

This is a long and cumbersome process; however the pros are great, such as: a global omnipresent network connecting everything at super speeds to everything else.